


Sunday Morning

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, F/M, Family Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 11:43:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20308939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Sickly sweet Emily au fluff responding to the prompt: ‘You’ve got flour on your cheek’ and an @xfficchallenges prompt: ‘You broke my heart’.





	Sunday Morning

She’s on a stool against the bench, eyebrows sloping, tongue clamped between her teeth, cheeks pink with exertion. There’s a ceramic bowl, a rolling pin in both hands, a lopsided circle of dough with crimped edges before her. A haphazard pile of cookie cutters in assorted shapes lies to one side, as yet unused. The oven is warming and there’s already an aroma of sweet, sweet anticipation in the air.

“Is it even yet?” Emily asks, blowing a wisp of fringe from her eyes and Scully bends down to look at the height of the dough.

“Not quite, sweetie,” she says. “Keep trying.”

“You’re not going to go full science on her and measure that to nearest millimetre, are you Scully?”

“If it’s not level, the cookies won’t bake evenly,” Emily says, a serious parrot.

“If they’re made with love, they’ll taste delicious, whatever shape or size they are,” he says, twisting an end off the dough and popping it in his mouth. 

Emily tuts dramatically. If she weren’t holding the rolling pin, he’d be rewarded with a hands-on-hips eye-rolling sigh. “They’re not ready, Mulder.”

Swatting his hand with a tea-towel, Scully repeats Emily’s scolding. He leans back against the bench and admires his team. Scully looks good in an apron. An over-sized grey thing with an alien head on the front that he tucked under her Christmas tree last year, a kind of unconscious nod to a more domestic future. Emily is wearing a Cookie Monster apron and a mini chef’s hat at a jaunty angle.

Emily selects a cutter. A dolphin. She sets out making the shapes with the same precision as Scully would. Scully smiles at him, her eyes full of admiration for this child whose very being is miraculous, whose existence has pulled them together in ways they could never have foreseen. Making cookies in their kitchen on a Sunday morning is as wild as life gets these days, and it feels so fucking good that the only choices they have to make is whether to have chocolate or vanilla.

Emily counts to eight before switching shapes. With a deft slice, Scully lifts and lays the dolphins in a pod on the oven tray and slides it onto the oven shelf. Her hair flutters on the warm draught and she smooths it down, in that coy way he’ll never get enough of. 

By the time he’s dragged his eyes off Scully, Emily is already six hearts in to the next round. She’s struggling to free the sticky dough from one so he stands beside her, takes a knife and slips it around the insides. The dough falls to the surface but splits on impact.

Emily’s lips wobble. “You broke my heart, Mulder.” She says it so indignantly that it’s hard not to laugh at her jutting chin and white-knuckled grip on the cutter. Such a Scully spitfire.

Sifting flour over the bench top, he takes the dough, remoulds it into a ball and together they roll it out again. He chooses a cutter, takes her small hand in his and presses it into the dough. She giggles as they loosen the cookies together.   
Her small face turns up to his. “You’ve got flour on your cheek,” she says, giggling and daubing her white-tipped finger on his other one. “Silly, Mulder.”

“Hey,” he says, dropping another cookie on the tray. “You’re the one making Christmas trees in July.” The triangular points of the cut dough are sharp and clean. “Who’s sillier, I ask?”

“But you chose that one,” she says, pouting. “Besides, they’re just fir trees any other time of the year.”

Scully turns her back to laugh, the knot of the apron bobbing up and down with the rhythm of her shoulders.

“So, Professor Emily,” he taps the tray of cookies on the bench, ready to be cooked, “here’s the thing…as it’s not currently the 14th of February, which in some places in the world is known as Valentine’s Day, can you tell me what love-hearts are called any other time of the year?”

Emily screws up her nose and thinks for a long, hard minute. She chances a look at Scully who’s waiting with equal anticipation. “My-o-car-dee-ums.” She grins at him, drops a tree on the tray and kisses his floury cheek, before adding, “silly.”


End file.
